Loved and Lost
by TheArtlessRose
Summary: The grandfather clock chimed as the big hand hit twelve: midnight. The day had come again, just like last year and the year before. Maybe if I could have slept through the pain, it would have been more bearable… Esme-centric. A story of love and how it changes your life. A story of moving on. Carlisle x Esme, Bella x Edward
1. The Hiker

**Loved and Lost by Isabella Morgan Meyer**

 **Summary:** The grandfather clock chimed as the big hand hit twelve: midnight. The day had come again, just like last year and the year before. Maybe if I could have slept through the pain, it would have been more bearable… Esme-centric. Carlisle x Esme, Bella X Edward (Eventually)

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 **Loved and Lost**

 **Chapter One: The Hiker**

The grandfather clock chimed as the big hand hit twelve: midnight. The day had come again, just like last year and the year before. Maybe if I could have slept through the pain, it would have been more bearable…

I sat on the bed, unmoving, frozen in the never-ending midpoint of a sit-up that would have been so very uncomfortable had I been human. Beside me was my husband, just as still, just as silent. But I wouldn't look at him, because I knew what I would see.

He was hurt.

He was my husband; I didn't want to see him hurt. Yet still, everything was so new to me. Not long ago, the word 'husband' had been a word that caused me unimaginable pain, and now here was Carlisle, the most perfect creature I had ever met, the most compassionate. And here I was, causing him pain. I didn't deserve him; no, I deserved Charles, the scum of the Earth that he was.

The sound of it still rang in my mind to this day, this very sad day: the slap of his hand against my cheek, the thud of my head against the kitchen counter, the slam of the front door as he walked away, and, worst of all, the slam of it as he returned, the clomp of his footsteps on his way to the bedroom…

And now, twelve years later, I played the memories back like an old cassette, faded from time but never any better, and realized it was true; time won't heal you until you find the strength to move on. Somewhere between those horrible memories — the beatings, the _physical_ pain — was something much worse. It was the pandemonium of the crowded hospital halls, the screams that fell from my lips (but it was all okay when my crying baby rested, for the first time, against my chest) and, when two days passed, so did his — my son's — final breath. He had died, two days old, from lung cancer.

If I'd had it my way, that would have been my final breath, too. I would have died when I hit the bottom of the cliff. But Carlisle had saved me, and now I was, alive — in a way, at least. I was reliving it all over again, and I wasn't the only one.

Downstairs, Edward was holding his head in his hands, and his dry sobs carried up the spiral staircase to the master bedroom. There was nothing but sadness in this house.

"Go," I whispered, knowing he could hear. The front door opened and Edward, running out into the cold New York air, left all of my thoughts behind.

For now, Edward was pretending to be my brother. We had lived in Rochester for a year now, and I hadn't yet left the house. I wasn't a newborn anymore; more than ten years, and Edward's rebellion, had passed. So, when the invitation appeared in the mail, Carlisle and I had decided together that I would debut at the wedding.

The wedding was between a man named Royce King II and his fiancée, Rosalie Hale. Both were esteemed members of society; Royce's father, Royce King I, was the owner of the bank in which Mr. Hale worked. We had heard of the engagement just months before, and the wedding was in a week. Carlisle, having made an acquaintance with Mr. King, had been invited, and Edward and I were going with him – the wife and the brother-in-law.

"Esme, dear…" Carlisle began, the silence broken. I turned my head towards him, well aware of my dead, blackened eyes. "Will you talk to me this year?" I panicked. I absolutely hated seeing Carlisle's beautiful face wrinkle in hurt when I once again told him that I didn't want to talk. So much, in fact, that if I was human, I probably would've feigned sleep.

Although I preferred to be left alone on this day, Carlisle still tried to get me to talk to him. That was what was hurting him from the beginning — I wouldn't talk to him about it. It wasn't his fault, but I just couldn't bear to talk about my son out loud, especially not today. That would just shattered my dead heart into a thousand more pieces, and I was sure Carlisle didn't want that.

"Carlisle, I can't. Please, I just want to be alone." He kept his poker face, but I could see the hurt in his eyes.

"Alright then, love. I'm going to work — I think a 24-hour shift today. I'll be back by midnight tonight." I kept my head down as he kissed my cheek and left, not holding back his speed. I heard a few muffled jingles from downstairs before the front door closed once more. I was alone, just like I'd asked for.

I had time to kill, so I decided to clean up the house a bit. Back when I was a newborn, there had been a lot more to clean up, thanks to my uncontrollable strength. I'd ended up breaking countless objects, and even hurting Edward or Carlisle once or twice, much to my dismay. Now that I wasn't worrying about Charles on a daily basis, I'd discovered that I loved interior decorating, and so I wasn't all too happy with broken furniture. At least I got to redecorate.

Now that my newborn strength was gone and I'd learned to control my vampire strength, there wasn't much to clean up – no broken furniture or any dirty dishes, since none of us ate. I dawdled around the house with a duster; every speck of dust was visible to me, floating around in the air as I dusted the countertop. Of course, the dust didn't go anywhere, frustrating me to no end. The only good part of this was that it occupied most of my brain so that I didn't dwell on my memories. Nevertheless, somewhere in the back of my mind, I was still sad.

I gave up dusting as I could tell that it wasn't working and settled for tidying up the windows. Grabbing a washcloth and soaking it in water, I walked up to the nearest window in the kitchen to wipe it down. When I looked in the window, the first thing I saw was a reflection of me. It was faint, but not so faint that I didn't see how dark my eyes were. They were coal black.

I gasped at the sight of them. Never had I gone so long without hunting – I'm sure Carlisle would have noticed, had I looked him in the eye. But I hadn't – and now I could feel the unnoticed flames rise in my throat. I had to hunt _now_ , or I would slaughter the whole city.

I dropped the cloth and shattered my way through the window. Overcome by hunger and bloodlust just like in my newborn years, feeling my every emotion heighten, I ran full-speed through the forest until I caught the scent of an elk. Without a second thought, I savagely pounced on the animal, ripping its head from its body and drinking it dry. When I looked up, its head lay a mile from its body, which was ripped to shreds across the dirty, bloody forest floor. I would feel horrible for destroying the body later, but at that moment my only concern was the waste of blood that could've been mine. At least I didn't have to hide the bloodless body – all signs pointed to a bear attack. I inhaled deeply – that was a mistake.

There was a young man climbing a mountain about a mile north. The blood was pumping heavily through his veins, and his heart was racing, I turned to flee, to let this unsuspecting man live, but he lost his balance and cut his leg on a sharp rock.

I can not explain what happened next.

Warm blood came oozing out of the gash in his leg. From where I stood, I could hear his string of profanities, but he kept on climbing. The gash grew deeper as he trekked, leaving a trail of crimson along the smokey grey stones.

Someone had set my body on fire. My legs moved on their own accord, now. I had no control.

I scaled the mountain, ripping chunks of it off with the force of my feet and hands. As I neared the hiker at an inhuman speed, I could hear his heart pulse and see his jugular pound. I could hear the blood rushing through him and see the blood stain the mountain rocks red. I could smell him. I could smell his blood. Now I just needed a taste…

His jugular caved under my sharp teeth, and his body thrashed under my iron grip.

Suddenly, I was in heaven. At least, that was what it felt like. If I wasn't blinded in that moment, I would have recognized hell, with its infernal flames and glorious heat. But in that moment I was blinded, and I could see why Edward had wanted to leave us. He was leaving us for bliss. This was… perfect. Well, it _was_ perfect until I was ripped away from my kill.

I growled at Edward. He winced, but he didn't let me go to my food. I thrashed about in his arms, growling and screaming, and he quickly brought my lips to the neck of a deer. I drained it hungrily, and finally came back to my senses from the satiating blood.

"Edward?" I asked, my voice tinkling like bells – the sound of an innocent woman, one who hadn't just drained a human. His face came into focus, the face of my son. "What… what happened?" I looked down at the bloody hiker and wiped his blood off of my lips with the back of my hand, shaking. I was horrified. Rich, scarlet blood dripped from my teeth.

"We… we can save him?" I cried hysterically, trembling from the all-consuming guilt. "We can change him?"

Edward sighed. "We can't," he admitted. "He's lost too much blood. He's… gone."

 _He's dead,_ I heard.

I collapsed against my son, sobbing mercilessly. I'd killed someone, someone with a family. _He_ was someone's son, and I'd just taken him away from his mother. I was no better than lung cancer.

Edward picked me up. Through my venom-fogged vision, I saw trees fly past us like a mangled blur; Edward always had been the fastest of the three of us.

When he put me down, it was on the sofa of our living room. I stood immediately, walking into the kitchen. Leaning down, I picked up the washcloth from where I'd dropped it beside the broken window. In the remains of the shattered glass, I saw a reflection of half of my face; it was cut off by the beautiful forest sunset where the glass was missing. The sun gently dipped against the horizon, painting the sky a lovely red and orange. The malachite trees casted long shadows on the dewy ground, standing tall underneath bullet-filled skies. Such beauty — what a stark contrast to my hideous red eyes.

I heard the door crash open and instinctively turned around. What I was met with wasn't a pretty sight either.

In front of me stood an exasperated looking Carlisle with red eyes and a screaming, bloody girl with torn up clothes in his arms.

Even in tattered clothing the girl was incredibly beautiful. She had long, golden-blonde hair that had fallen from the ribbon that held it up and wide, violet eyes that were filled with tears. On her neck was a crescent shaped bite mark, and littering the rest of her body were blackened bruises. But there was something about her that screamed familiarity, as if I'd seen her before; then a photograph, noir et blanch, formed in my mind. It was a poised woman with purple eyes, yellow hair pulled daintily into an up-do, side-by-side with a handsome young man. Underneath the photograph were the words, _Together with their families…_

A strangled gasp escaped from my lips, because here she was –

Rosalie Lillian Hale.

A vampire.


	2. Don't Fall Apart

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Twilight. Twilight is the property of Stephanie Meyer, and is not my intellectual property. There is no financial gain from this, nor will any be sought. This is for entertainment purposes only. I do not own anything that bears a resemblance to Twilight or any other story on this site.

 **Loved and Lost**

 **Chapter Two: Don't Fall Apart**

 **Carlisle's POV**

I strode down the roads of Rochester, the brisk air shivering as it touched my skin. The night had settled, sidewalks lit by the soft, blue light of street lamps. Humans were scarce in this area yet still, for the sake of pretences, I blew on my hands and rubbed them together, missing the feeling I'd last felt three hundred years ago, the feeling of being cold, of being hot, of being human. My fur coat brushed against my neck, a feather against a rock, and I sighed, tossing the empty coffee cup I held into the trashcan that lined the alleyway of a dark building; I was playing human, and humans couldn't stay awake for days on end, at least not without caffeine in their bloodstream. They never noticed that I never drank from the cup. I clenched my fists, muscles bulging from my forearms, and sighed, frustrated.

My wife was at home, miserable, and it was all I could do not to run back to her and take her into my arms; no, she needed to be alone, to remember, to move on so that time could heal her wounds. My throat was constricted as images flashed through my mind: the most beautiful woman with billows of caramel-coloured hair spilling down her back, crumpled into a heap at the bottom of a steep cliff, her heartbeat so faint that humans could not detect it — or maybe they just didn't care enough to listen. If my heart hadn't already been dead, it would have died that day. Instead, it yearned for her, and I swore I almost felt it beat for the first time in centuries; all it took was the most intense feeling of dread — the worst feeling — and the most passionate love at first sight stirring back up in my cold, empty chest.

It was a new moon tonight, just before twelve o'clock, and the sky was coloured a pitch black. There were no stars, either. A quiet thumping rang in my ears just then, a soft ba-dum, ba-dum, and as I drew closer to the alley, it grew louder. The heartbeat was strained, crashing against a wounded set of ribs, thrashing wildly in someone's chest… but who's was it? I dashed through the backstreet, golden eyes darting across the dark red bricking of the office buildings, scouring the ground for the source of the thumps.

There was a woman on the ground, collapsed sideways with her legs clenched tightly together. Her jaw was tight, tears streaming down her face, heart racing furiously. Golden hair jutted out from her torn bonnet, baby blue, a shade lighter than her violet eyes, wide. The dress she wore was in shreds, barely covering inches of her skin. She shook, trembled, not from the cold but in a way that seemed like resistance, like the last thing she wanted was to move a muscle.

The stench of blood hit my nostrils hard like sweet, sweet ambrosia, emanating from her bleeding wounds. Her lip was busted open, spewing out streams of blood, forbidden fruit, as well as the cuts trailing down her arms, across her exposed stomach and down her torso, far down. My heart broke as I realized what she was a victim of, why she was slowly dying in this poorly lit alleyway… who she was.

I crouched beside her, hesitating. There was one sure-fire way I could save her… but why? What drew me to this girl, Rosalie? She looked up at me through wet eyelashes, bloodshot eyes swimming with fear, hurt, desperation. " _Please_ ," she whispered, eyelids dropping. Pain laced through her voice, an arrow through my heart. She seemed an angel, so innocent, fragile. " _Help_ …"

I'd seen people die before. I was a doctor, a _vampire_ ; heck, I'd even been _human_ once. Still, I felt the same urge I had with Edward, the instinct that I had to do something to save her. And so I did.

Taking her delicate, broken wrist in my hands, I brought it to my lips as if to kiss it. "Be strong, Rosalie Hale," I whispered, sinking my teeth into her skin. Her screams broke the surface just as my teeth did, shrill, pained, and I flinched. Was I just making it worse? Should I just have taken her life quickly? _No_ , I thought, pushing my venom further into her bloodstream. She was a fighter, after all; she'd survived hell already.

I bit her in three more spots along her arm, then her other wrist, and finally her neck; that was the hardest, her sweet blood spilling into my mouth, yet I forced myself away. It was like ripping my head away from a sip of water after decades roaming the desert, like smelling century old wine as a recovering alcoholic and just walking away. But I did, and I could almost feel my eyes turning red for the fourth time ever. They burned, not from the blood, but from the venom of my tears. Each time, it would be harder. Each time would be the hardest thing I'd ever had to do.

Her body thrashed in my arms, still weak and broken but now in unimaginable pain on top of everything else. For a moment I regretted my decision, but as I envisioned Rosalie with golden eyes — maybe even by Edward's side — I knew I had done the right thing; well, at least the thing that would make the most of us happy. There really was no right decision in matters of life and death; it was just the lesser of two evils. Although in this case, it was a matter of death or a simpler death, and finding the lesser of those evils was next to impossible.

I swooped her up in my arms, her hardest beatings upon my back like tickles of a feather to my impenetrable skin. Maybe she would come to regret _my_ decision, but at least she would be sort of alive. I could live with the guilt if it came to that. Carrying her like a baby, I sped along Rochester's roads, down the winding path that lead to our looming home. It was the crack of midnight, grandfather clock's chimes ringing through the house as I hurried up the porch stairs and through the front door, feet heavy on the wooden planks.

Esme's back was to me, her body facing the window. Glass was laying on the floor, the shattered window virtually non-existent, and the air in the room was thick as motor oil. She turned to face me, sorrow-ridden eyes boring through my skull — crimson eyes. "No," I breathed, heartbroken, staring into my wife's dead eyes. I could only imagine the pain she felt as her eyes fell to the destroyed girl in my arms.

 _No, Esme… Don't fall apart; I need you more than ever. I need you, I love you…_


End file.
